What I Want to See for the United States, Conservatism, and the GOP

Looking ahead to 2010 and beyond, this is what I want to see in the United States of America:

A biblical, spiritual revival … something for which I pray to God

The revitalization of conservatism (a shared value in the Founders’ “constrained vision”) in American public life … something of which I seek to persuade others

A Republican Party more informed by conservative, limited government principles … also something of which I seek to persuade others

A governing Republican Party majority …something for which I volunteer and vote

Where incompatibilities between the above priorities can be proven with a reasonable degree of likelihood, the higher priority wins. (And no, I can’t think of any situation where voting for or against a political candidate has any bearing on the possibility of a revival.)
That being said, a respect for the Constitution and a conservative understanding of history informs me that effective and lasting changes in the political sphere are achieved incrementally. Purity is a religious aspiration, a political illusion.

Now let me explain – including some thoughts I have shared before – how I currently believe Nos. 2-4 above can be achieved (1 is in a separate category, of course):

Greater fidelity to a fiscally conservative agenda that respects the boundaries of government is the most salient need faced by the United States, the Republican Party, and the conservative coalition today.

Though there are points of discrepancy, fiscal and social conservatism rightly understood are far more compatible with each other than not.

The common opponent of socialism is far more significant than disagreements among those on the Right.

By the same token, Mark Hillman is right: “Social moderates who say they just want government to ‘stay out of it’ will soon be tested. Will they vociferously oppose restrictions on religious speech, taxpayer funding of abortion, and federal legislation to pre-empt state laws on abortion and marriage?”

All efforts by elements of different wings of the conservative coalition to demonize, belittle, or “throw under the bus” should be eschewed.

There is plenty of room for healthy and respectful debate within the conservative coalition.

To achieve electoral success, there is a need to merge conservative principles with pragmatic issues of concern to the average unaffiliated voter (example: school choice) – using the issue as a means to educate in the broader principles … and then deliver on the promises.

Ronald Reagan is great, one of our greatest Presidents ever, but conservatism and the GOP will falter if they obsess over finding the next Reagan, or cling to “Reagan Republican” as a hollow badge of nostalgia.

Comments

Forget “conservatism,” please. It has been Godless and thus irrelevant. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).